


The Logic of Stars Collapsing

by Portrait_of_a_Fool



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Language, M/M, Minor Violence, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 20:09:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2081517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Portrait_of_a_Fool/pseuds/Portrait_of_a_Fool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s over a year before Steve finds Bucky again. Determined to figure things out and make this second chance <em>work</em>, Steve takes Bucky home with him. It’s not the happiest of times, but Steve’s always been an optimist, even when the odds are stacked against him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Episode in Grey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lustmordred](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lustmordred/gifts), [nookienostradamus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nookienostradamus/gifts).



> _“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness.”_
> 
> — Chuck Palahniuk

**[1]**

Steve finds Bucky in the northernmost reaches of Canada where the cold is the deepest, the environment the most unforgiving. It’s been over a year and Steve is elated, cold-stung cheeks warming and a smile cracking across his face. He should not be this happy, not when this is only the beginning, but that’s _why_ he’s happy: he’s got the opportunity to start all over again.

The first thing Bucky does when he calls his name is turn and stare at him. He says, “No.”

The second thing Bucky does is punch Steve and as he hits the ice he thinks maybe it’s best not to get his hopes up so soon. There’s that saying about counting chickens before they hatch and maybe he did that.

He pushes himself up and tries again anyway.

He says, “Bucky, it’s me.”

Bucky hits him again, but Steve thinks it’s like this: he didn’t bail out and that is a start. It has to be or else everyone was right about Bucky, about how he’s the kind of guy you _stop_ and he will not believe that.

So, Steve gets up and tries again. He says, “Please.”

Bucky says, “No,” but he doesn’t hit him again and he doesn’t walk away.

An eternal optimist, Steve thinks he can work with this.

**[2]**

It’s another year before Steve brings Bucky home with him. Bucky has bad days and he has okay (not _good_ , they haven’t made it that far yet) days. Mostly he seems offline, stuck somewhere in between who he was and who he was forced to become. Sometimes he still says _no_ when Steve calls him Bucky, his voice strained and silvery-tight as a garrote. There is terror and animal fury in his eyes and Steve doesn’t understand, but he tries.

Steve can’t lie to himself and say that it’s progress, but it’s _stabilized_ —somewhat—and that’s good enough for him. He misses grocery stores just around the corner and scones from the bakery a couple of blocks from his apartment. He thinks that if Bucky is ever to be more than just _okay (sometimes)_ then he needs to reintroduce him to the world. He decides they will start with the apartment, only those walls; it’s safest there.

Bucky doesn’t fight him on it too hard though he seems reluctant to leave the sad little shack they’ve been holed up in for over a year. Steve wonders if Bucky started to think of it as _home_ , but he doesn’t know how to ask that. It seems a simple enough question, sure, but when he thinks about it then it really isn’t.

Once they make it back to civilization and the comfort of Steve’s apartment, the real work can begin. He might not be able to _fix_ Bucky—he won’t delude himself—but maybe he can _patch_ him. Make him comfortable enough that the animal fury leaves his eyes.

Steve entertains ridiculous and romantic ideas about making Bucky smile again. He thinks that would be a nice thing for both of them.

**[3]**

The apartment smells of dust and closed-in spaces, so Steve flings the windows open to the sounds of traffic and life and fresh air outside. Bucky stands in the middle of the living room with his hair hanging in his face. He bares his teeth at the noise and Steve thinks that’s kind of awful. But he tells himself that Bucky will get used to it. It’s that he’s _really_ hearing it for the first time without the whirr of mission directives filling up his ears from the inside. Life is unfiltered now.

It should be beautiful, but Bucky looks like he hates it. When his eyes meet Steve’s, he looks like he hates him, too. That hurts worse than a bullet in the back ever could.

**[4]**

One night a couple of months after they’ve been back, Steve goes out for groceries. He leaves Bucky in front of the television, staring at it, but not watching it. He’s been watching movies with him; he started with the old classics and is going forward to the newer classics. Bucky’s been out and about longer than Steve has, at least he thinks so, but he knows he’s probably seen and experienced far less.

They need bread and milk and eggs; Steve likes cheese and so does Bucky, so he plans to buy a couple of different kinds for them to try. It’s almost fun, it’s almost normal. It feels like playing pretend, like Bucky is an imaginary friend that Steve’s gotten too fixated on trying to make real.

He’s looking at cereal, still a bit overwhelmed by all of the choices even now, when a box of cinnamon Chex lands in his cart. He looks up at the person who tossed them and finds Natasha staring at him.

“Really, Steve?” she says. She’s as calm as ever, but her arched eyebrow suggests she thinks Steve has lost his mind.

“Really,” he says because he doesn’t need to ask to know what she’s talking about. He’s already fielded phone calls—and one house call—from Fury and Sam is always abuzz with questions that Steve can’t answer to either of their satisfaction.

“Why?” she asks.

“Because he’s my _friend_.”

Steve has repeated it so many times it feels mechanical; the shape of the words, the structure of the sentence as familiar and well-fitted as the teeth on gears. The sentiment never gets old, the tightening in his gut and the burning in his throat never wears thin and dissipates.

“Is he?” Natasha asks.

She takes the end of his cart and starts pulling it along. Steve has no choice but to follow her. She goes over to the next aisle and picks out soup for him. He didn’t know she knew he liked the loaded baked potato kind. Spies: they know the weirdest things.

“Yes,” Steve says.

Natasha sighs and drags his cart on and he follows again.

“Are you sure?” she asks.

All of his friends have good intentions, but they don’t know and they don’t understand. Fury flat-out told him the last time they spoke that the best thing for Bucky was to be put down. He’d said it like Bucky was a mad dog, some untrustworthy beast that could bite at any moment. Steve had broken his phone he was so angry; just squeezed it until the plastic case split and fell apart. When he’d turned around, Bucky had been standing behind him, head tipped slightly to one side. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Steve says. “Why are you here? Did Fury send you?”

She laughs softly. “No. I came because I heard what you were doing. I wanted to see how you are.”

“I’m fine,” Steve says. “ _We’re_ fine.”

“Is he really fine?” she asks. She’s stopped doing his shopping for him, now she’s got her hands braced on the end of the cart and is staring into his eyes, daring him to lie to her.

“Yes,” Steve says.

Natasha’s lips quirk up into something that’s not quite a smirk, but isn’t really a smile either.

“I told you, Steve: you’re a terrible liar,” she says.

“He’s okay,” Steve says. He holds her gaze even though he wants to stare at the shiny tile floor. “Sometimes.”

“See? The truth isn’t so difficult.” Now she’s smiling. As quickly as it was there, it falls away though. “Huh.”

“Huh?” Steve asks.

“Huh,” Natasha confirms.

Steve rolls his eyes.

“Huh, what?” he asks.

Natasha doesn’t clarify, not exactly. What she says is, “Was the feeling mutual back then or was it just you?”

Steve blinks and blinks and blinks. He is not that transparent and he knows it, he never has been—in the 1940s he couldn’t be—but Natasha is scarily perceptive.

“It wasn’t just me,” Steve says. He clears his throat and looks away. This is not something he wants to talk about. It’s not shame that makes him feel that way; it’s because this is his _life_. Even Captain America is allowed a sliver of selfishness, a shard of something lovely only for himself. “I need to get back, I’ve been gone longer than I meant to be.”

“Hey, Steve,” she calls after him.

He looks back at her.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

Steve doesn’t know if she’s sorry for implying that Bucky can’t be fixed or if she’s offering her condolences on the loss of the one person he always loved the most.

Then she says, “I hope it works out. I really do.”

Steve smiles then and walks away, toward the checkout, toward home and the imaginary friend he’s intent on making real again.

**[5]**

Steve makes a list of things to try; things that might help him make Bucky better. He leaves off the things that require therapists and clinical settings. He won’t risk it and he won’t do that to Bucky; subject him to some prying stranger’s questions and the pills they would try to make him take.

He does his research on the internet and at the library with the smell of books tickling in his nostrils. He takes Bucky with him when he goes and the first few times, he sits across from Steve at one of the long wooden tables. He doesn’t speak and he doesn’t move, he only stares and that animal fury is almost always in his eyes. Once, Steve looks up at him though and finds that look gone, replaced by something so sad and deep and sharp it feels like he’s being cut. Bucky looks horrified and confused and _afraid_ sitting there. Then he blinks and it’s gone.

Their trips to the library come to an abrupt halt when Bucky knocks over an entire shelf of periodicals. Steve doesn’t know why he did it and when he asks, Bucky only shakes his head, like he doesn’t know why either.

Steve works on his list after that and most things get little to no reaction. Steve remains patient and hopeful anyway.

One evening after doing the supper dishes, Steve comes back into the living room and finds Bucky standing there, staring out the window at nothing at all. Steve isn’t thinking about his list or the things he learned while compiling it. That’s why he walks up behind Bucky and puts his hand on his shoulder.

Bucky puts him through the wall that separates the living room from the hallway.

“Okay. That’s okay,” Steve says as he thrashes his way up from the wreckage.

He wasn’t thinking about things like _exaggerated startle response_ and _hypervigilance_ and _irritable behavior and angry outbursts_. He was thinking that Bucky looked lonely standing there. He was wondering when the last time anyone touched him out of kindness was. Steve was remembering the taste of young adulthood and nervous sweat the first time he screwed up his courage and kissed his best and only friend, how he’d thought, _please let him kiss me back_ and Bucky had.

Bucky is still staring out the window when Steve limps off to bed after clearing away some of the rubble. He’s tired—so _tired_ —but he checks his list once he’s under the covers, finds that _therapy animal (?)_ is his next option. Steve decides he’ll start going to shelters first thing in the morning.

He’s reaching to turn off his bedside lamp when a shadow drapes itself long and dark across the floor. Bucky is standing in the doorway, looking out of place in his modern clothes.

“I’m sorry I hit you,” he says.

Before Steve can respond, he walks away.


	2. Filaments of Shadows

**[1]**

The kitten is a tiger-stripe orange tabby and Steve brings it home with hope etched across his face. Bucky glances away from his eyes and instead watches as Steve puts the fat, fuzzy little thing down on the floor. It is bright-eyed and curious with a round face and softly peaked ears that seem too big for its head. It is a friendly kitten, used to people and strange places, new smells—it’s eager to explore them all. It sniffs the toe of Bucky’s boot and bats the end of one dangling shoelace.

_Mother had a kitten that looked almost just like that. When we were kids, me and Steve would play with it. Steve was entranced by something smaller and weaker than himself. He wanted to protect it. He’s always wanted to protect everything._

The urge to kick the kitten away is there like the itch of a healing wound and Bucky shuffles back a step, not afraid of the kitten, but of what he might do to it. Afraid he might give in to the urge to rip the scab off that invisible wound and let the stink and muck gush out of it into the room. It will pollute the air and wash his mind clean of the intrusive thoughts that have curled up there in all the hidden recesses. The wound is a tunnel, the earthworm loops and whorls of his brain.

He steps over the kitten so, so carefully; foot coming down lightly _just in case_. Then he steps around Steve, sees him from the corner of his eye—he reaches to touch, wants to touch so badly it’s something nearly tangible enough to feel ( _to bite_ ). Steve doesn’t touch him though, he remembers the wall just like Bucky does. He doesn’t want to go through another one and Bucky doesn’t want to put him through one either, but he doesn’t trust himself not to do it either.

“Where are you going, Buck?” Steve asks.

Steve makes a point of saying his name, like he thinks Bucky will forget again. Bucky thinks it’s too late for that. It’s too late for a lot of things.

“For a walk,” Bucky says.

“But…”

“It’s just a walk,” Bucky says. “Let me go.”

Steve’s expression clearly says he has misgivings, but he steps back and lets Bucky go.

It’s early winter and everything sparkles, made brighter by the cold and Bucky breathes in the sharp air. It’s nice to have air that isn’t recycled through vents. He walks, eyes roving everywhere to suss out possible threats. He keeps his metal hand in his pocket. His arm is covered by a sleeve, the hand covered by a glove, but he’s aware of it to an almost painful degree—people stare, people ask questions, some intrepid soul might demand to know what’s going on with that. Bucky thinks he might have to cave their skull in. It’s best to be on the safe side.

A couple of blocks later, he glances at a shop window, sees Steve’s reflection ghosted and rippled back to him from about thirty yards away. He stands out now, tall and broad, nothing like the boy he used to be. Except that’s not quite right, Steve looks different, but he’s still _Steve_ down to the bone.

It’s Bucky who has changed on the inside.

There’s music coming from an open window, something that snaps-grinds- _crunches_. It’s the music of breaking bones, ruptured arteries, liquefied insides. It’s angry and dangerous. It’s like nothing Bucky has ever heard and he likes it. He stops on the street corner to listen better, wonders when this genre of music was invented. He has an idea it’s not a favorite of the masses. There’s a hint of amusement at the thought, something faint and barely recognizable. Bucky pushes it away, then he twists around the corner, close to the wall where the shadows are thickest and starts looping back.

Steve always looks straight ahead, he’s never been the sort to look over his shoulder and wonder what’s coming up behind him in the dark. He was stupidly brave and optimistic even when he had no business being such.

He stands behind Steve who is searching the street with wide eyes, worry making his shoulders go tense. Bucky clears his throat and he whirls around. For a moment, Bucky stares at him, trying to remember the magic combination of words, the things that make human interaction _conversation_ , not _mission reports_.

“You want to get a cup of coffee?” Bucky finally manages. The words feel funny, meringue squishy and bleach-tainted. Then Steve grins, eyes lighting up as he rocks on his heels a bit and Bucky knows he remembered right.

“Sure,” Steve says.

The coffee shop is overwhelming, light and noise and strange smells. There are only two exits and the front of the shop is all glass. There is nowhere to take cover. On the street, there are shadows and alleyways, early evening crowds to get lost in. Bucky’s breath catches in his throat at the idea of sitting in the shop with all of those clear glass windows revealing him to whomever might happen to glance that way. This post is not defendable.

Steve doesn’t say anything when he pushes his chair back under the table and heads for the door.

“I think I’m going to name the kitten Tiger, like the one your mom had,” Steve says after a couple of blocks. “Do you remember?”

Bucky nods then takes a slug of his still scalding hot coffee. It burns his mouth, scorches his taste buds. He takes another swallow.

He likes the pain because it feels real.

**[2]**

Nights are long and featureless things. Bucky sits in a chair in the living room and listens to the nighttime sounds of the apartment: Steve turning over in his bed, the kitten playing in the bathroom, the slow irregular drip of the kitchen sink. He drums his metal fingers lightly on the arm of the chair and stares until spots explode in front of his eyes, dull red-brown light in the dark; light the color of dried blood.

Bucky doesn’t need much sleep anymore, he thinks it’s probably a part of his programming, although he can’t remember for sure. Steve sleeps about six hours a night, close to average, but not quite. His programming was kinder than Bucky’s though and he knows that, too. He doesn’t hold it against Steve or envy his ability to sleep because sleep is cruel to Bucky. It used to be dreamless black, an eternity of shadow and spilled ink that blotted out everything. Now sleep is full of colors and sounds, people and faces he hasn’t seen or thought about in years. It’s full of the family he lost forever ago and of Steve’s bony shoulders under his hands, slick with sweat.

 _It’s okay, Bucky, I won’t_ break, _you know._

But Bucky had been afraid he would, that if he pushed it, he’d shatter Steve like porcelain and there would be no one to forgive him. So, he didn’t do it because he gave a damn, because his worst fear was the fear of hurting Steve.

It was always sweaty palms and cautious mouths, nothing more even though Steve’s frustration was a very real thing; his disappointment living and breathing in the spaces between kisses. If there had been more time then maybe they would have, but Bucky’s not sure. He thinks so though; he was overly cautious, but Steve had a way of wearing him down with his stubborn determination.

Steve loved him and he loved Steve; that love had been bright and gleaming and theirs alone. _Where did those boys go?_

One of them is asleep down the hallway. He’s a man now, undeniably so, but a man that looks at Bucky every bit the same way he always has.

It is Bucky who has failed here, the one who has forgotten how to truly feel anything more than anger most of the time. Other things sneak up on him though, pits opening inside of him full of terrible things like sadness and regret. Love echoes like the ring of a hollow bell down the hallways of memory. Bucky tries to snatch at that feeling and hold on because he remembers it as something _good_ , but it always slips through his fingers.

Night ticks on toward dawn and he sleeps in the armchair for a couple of hours before he jerks awake with a gasp. Sweat slicks his face, making his hair stick to his forehead, the side of his neck.

Steve’s awake, watching him from the kitchen doorway, brow furrowed with concern. Bucky watches him back and that feeling swirls up and flutters inside his chest. He grabs for it and thinks he feels the warm sunlight dance of it through his body. His fingers slide right over it; a brief touch of velvet softness before emptiness contaminated with rage seeps back in.

“Looks like you were having a bad dream. Do you want to talk about it?” Steve asks, taking a couple of steps into the living room toward Bucky.

“No. I slept fine.”

Steve nods and takes a step forward then another back. For a split second, Bucky wants him to close the distance and let him lay his head on his shoulder. Maybe he could sleep then. Then it is gone, flittered away into the ether of his mind and he’s only staring once more.

“Do you want breakfast?” Steve asks.

_I want a bullet for my head._

“Yes,” Bucky says. He wipes the sweat off his face, pushes his soaked hair back. “Thank you.”

“No problem, buddy.” Steve offers him a quick smile before he turns away again.

Bucky closes his eyes, taps his metal fingers on the arm of the chair and listens to the daytime sounds of the apartment, different and the same as the nighttime sounds. The sounds fill his ears, but all he can think is: _There are cracks in everything._

**[3]**

They watch movies and eat meals, they go for walks in the evenings; sometimes Steve walks alongside him and sometimes Bucky leaves while he’s in the shower so he can be alone for a little while. Steve, always dogged, catches up and Bucky lets him trail along behind him, lets him think he doesn’t know he’s there. Sometimes he’ll loop around and sneak up behind him, it’s almost like playing and it’s always the same follow-up when Steve turns. They drink a lot of coffee together and Steve seems happiest when they’re doing that. Sometimes Steve buys them brownies the size of dinner plates and they walk along eating them, letting their amped up metabolisms take care of the calories.

This is what being alive again is like and Bucky is restless with it, bewildered and left spinning some days. He rattles around the apartment, wound up energy wanting to explode outward. He’s hasn’t been without a purpose or direction for so long that the anxiousness for _action_ is slithering into his head and making him twitchy. Steve has friends, Steve has a way to burn off his excess energy, but Bucky does not.

He’s bored.

It occurs to him while watching a movie called _Star Wars_ that he’s not the least bit involved in. Space travel is interesting, he supposes, but he doesn’t like the movie as well as he’s liked some. Bucky does not know that to many, that would be considered a sin. If he did know, he wouldn’t care and he still wouldn’t like it.

The wall between the living room and the hallway is still busted and Bucky turns his head to look at it, the seeds of an idea forming. When Steve catches him looking, he shrugs. The kitten is curled up in Steve’s lap, purring itself to sleep. He smiles down at it then looks over at Bucky, who is still looking at the busted wall.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “It’s okay.”

“You keep saying that,” Bucky says. “It’s busted. I busted it… with you.”

“I’m fine,” Steve says.

Bucky thinks Steve is intentionally missing the point: it should have never happened to begin with. No one should be this broken and dangerous. He almost killed Steve once. What’s to keep it from happening again?

“The wall.”

It’s all Bucky can manage because he’s thinking about bony, sweaty shoulders and blue eyes framed by long lashes. He’s thinking that he’s sorry and there’s a well of sadness opening up inside of him because he remembers love, but he can’t keep his grip on it any longer. He knows it’s there, but he doesn’t know how to hold onto it.

“I’ll fix it,” Steve says.

“No, I will,” Bucky says.

Steve’s surprised silence brings Bucky a peculiar kind of satisfaction.

“I’ll help,” Steve says after a minute.

“No,” Bucky says. “I broke it and I’ll fix it. I want to. I need to.”

Is that a metaphor? Probably not.

“If you’re sure,” Steve says. “I’ll pick up the stuff tomorrow.”

“I’m coming with you,” Bucky says.

“That’d be great,” Steve says.

The funny thing is that he actually sounds like he means it. The pit of sadness yawns wider inside of Bucky as he turns to look at Steve directly. He wants to cradle his face in his hands, but he thinks his metal fingers are too cold, too inhuman, to do it right.

**[4]**

The wall turns out to be more work than Bucky thought it would be. There are studs to replace, framing to redo, drywall to hang and paint to cover it all up with. They couldn’t find the right color to match what was there, so Bucky ends up scraping the entire wall and repainting it. Steve tries to help, it’s just his way, but Bucky pushes him away and says, _No_. Steve goes grocery shopping instead. Paint chips gather in Bucky’s long hair, green as pine needles.

When he finishes the wall, he fixes the dripping kitchen sink. He’s always been good with his hands and he’s even better with them now, even if one is unnatural.

One day when Steve’s in the shower, Bucky takes his wallet and goes to the hardware store. He’s decided to paint the whole place. He buys gallons of light blue paint because he remembers that blue used to be his favorite color and it was Steve’s, too. Blue seems the right way to go even though he wants to paint it deep-bright red so they can live inside a gaping sore. The front door will be the scab; every time it opens will be like picking it off.

Bucky has seen Steve’s notebook, all the notes about transference and the need to sometimes make the internal into something observable. He doesn’t know much about all of that, but he still thinks it’s best if he doesn’t paint the apartment blood-red. He knows that just like he knows he shouldn’t tell Steve that he overheard Nick Fury when he said he needed to be put down. Just like he doesn’t tell Steve that sometimes he thinks Nick Fury was right.

Steve is coming out of the building when Bucky rounds the corner. He sees him and trots over.

“Where’d you go?” Steve asks.

“Christmas shopping,” Bucky says. He hefts a bucket of paint. “Where did you think I went?”

Steve blinks and then he laughs. Bucky stares at him for so long he thinks the shadows have moved to mark the passage of the time. Then he starts walking again.

He’s halfway up the stairs when he realizes it: he made a joke for the first time in seventy six years. He made a joke and it made Steve laugh. His lips twitch, trying to remember how to smile.

**[5]**

Night again, the apartment smelling of fresh paint, windows open to draw out the worst of the odor. What’s left behind is actually kind of pleasant; clean and new. The walls seem to glow in the diffuse light from the street lamps. Bucky’s breath glitters with frost when he exhales.

He closes his fingers over the arm of the chair and pushes himself to his feet. Down the hall he goes to the open door of Steve’s bedroom. He’s a long lump under the covers, burrowed in because of the chill air, but not suffering. The kitten is curled into a tight ball of fluff on the pillow beside him. Steve doesn’t snore, his breath no longer rattles and wheezes out of his stressed lungs.

Bucky walks into the bedroom, steps soft and silent. He stops at the foot of the bed and looks at Steve, thinking non-thoughts, thinking pictures and shapes and memories. He’s not close enough, he can’t see _right_ from this angle.

He crouches down beside Steve’s side of the bed and looks at him that way, fingers dangling between his knees. Steve’s eyelashes are dark shadows against his pale gold skin. Bucky tips his head to the side, willing it to come back; he can feel it trapped and thrashing beneath the crash and clatter of his machinery. He still bleeds, but he hasn’t felt human in a long time; didn’t even remember he once was.

If he is to survive this—being alive again—then he has to find an anchor, a key for the lock in his brain. Steve is the only person he has left in the whole world and he cannot remember the way his hair felt under his lips when he kissed his temple. The mental image, the recollection, is there, but the _sensation_ is gone. He hasn’t touched anyone with more than violence in decades and he wonders if his hands even remember how.

Steve is looking back at him and the moisture in his eyes looks silvery in this light.

“Bucky?” he asks. “You okay?”

Bucky shrugs one shoulder and rocks forward on his heels until his chin is almost resting on the side of the mattress. He can hear Steve’s heart, a faint thud from beneath the blankets. Maybe he’s imagining it, but he doesn’t think so; his hearing is superior to that of normal men. He wonders what Steve hears when he listens to him; if it’s all silence.

“Hey,” Steve says.

Bucky still doesn’t respond, only lifts his flesh-and-blood hand and touches the bow of Steve’s upper lip. He traces the shape of his mouth with a calloused finger, feels Steve’s warm breath against his skin. It’s there, a tingle that runs along his nerves and fumbles with a switch in his brain.

Steve snakes out his hand and touches Bucky’s as he’s withdrawing it. He threads their fingers together. Bucky wonders if there were ever dates for Steve, a nice girl or guy that wasn’t worried about hurting him simply because they loved him. Bucky finds he does and does not like that idea—he wanted for Steve to be happy, but not with anyone else. Except he’s been dead for a very long time and that’s unfair. He understands after a second that it’s almost a normal thought to have. It’s frightening in a way bullets and blood have never been.

Steve’s lips against his scarred knuckles are a startling revelation and Bucky snatches his hand away. It hurts too goddamn much, all of his conditioning, all of his knowledge of how to move and work through pain have not prepared him for this jolt.

Bucky closes his hand into a tight fist and flexes it as he turns away.

“Bucky.” Steve’s voice is soft, confused and yet, _open_. Vulnerable. “You can stay.”

Bucky shakes his head. He doesn’t think he can.


	3. Exhaling Earth, Inhaling Sky

**[1]**

It’s been a week since Bucky touched Steve’s mouth in the dark and he still thinks he can feel it. He finds himself twisting his fingers up in nothing but air, trying to recapture the sensation of Bucky’s hand in his. It’s desperate and sad and Steve cannot stop himself.

In another life, Steve once tried to carve their initials into a tree trunk. He was never going to tell Bucky about it, he was just going to leave it there as a silent testament to _S + B_. He’d wanted someone to know even if it was only the trunk of an oak tree. The tip of the blade had snapped off, his grip had loosened and his hand slid up the blade. There’s still a scar bisecting the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger. It was a silly thing to do, but he’d been so determined. The scar reminds him though and Steve rubs it sometimes when he thinks no one’s looking.

**[2]**

Bucky’s eyes are dark pits with darker rings around them. He sits quietly, he watches Steve a lot. One night Steve reaches out and strokes his hair and Bucky lets him for a whole minute before he gets up, says something about going for a walk. There’s a sound inside his head like tumbling rocks. They roll over and over, rattling around until the cold washes the racket away.

Steve didn’t follow this time, but he’s sitting on the steps outside of the building when Bucky gets back. He’s rubbing a scar on his hand that Bucky remembers because he’s the one who found Steve trying to stop the bleeding in the park restroom that summer day.

_I broke my knife._

_What were you doing?_

_Nothing. It’s all right, I’ve got it._

_Let me help, Steve._

Bucky’s nostrils flare when the phantom smell of blood and tap water fills them. He hears the crumple of brown paper towels, the rush of water in the porcelain sink. He can see the sheen of sweat on Steve’s cheek bones.

“You want to get a cup of coffee?” Steve asks it this time, staring up into Bucky’s face.

“Maybe a brownie, too,” Bucky says.

Steve nods and stands up, his coat flapping around him in the wind.

“You should zip your coat.” The words tumble out of his mouth, old and ingrained.

Steve looks over at him. “I don’t need to do that anymore.”

“You should do it anyway,” Bucky says.

“Why?” Steve asks.

“I… I don’t know,” Bucky says. He’s caught between _now_ and _then_. One side says Steve could catch a chill, it could become bronchitis or pneumonia; the other side argues that it hasn’t been a problem for ages now.

“I’ll zip it,” Steve says and he does.

Bucky is relieved.

They sit on a bench to drink their coffee and eat their brownies.

“What movie are we watching tonight?” Bucky asks. It seems like the _right_ thing to ask.

“Sam recommended one called _Boondock Saints_ ,” Steve says. “I picked it up a couple of days ago. It’s out of order from the way we’ve been watching them, but if you want to, we can.”

“I don’t mind,” Bucky says. Everything’s out of order and off-balance. He wishes Steve would wake up and realize that, but he’s loathe to disabuse him of his optimistic notions.

**[3]**

Steve’s got a new book to read and Bucky’s doing that staring thing he does. It unsettles Steve that he can sit that way for _hours_ on end, like he’s waiting for something or like he’s already dead.

He turns his attention to his book, opens it and reads the first paragraph. _We are all alone here and we are dead._ It’s like the words are screaming at him and he slaps the book closed. That one will have to wait. He gets up again and goes to the bookshelf, chooses a more modern book called _White Oleander_. His reading list is a bit more haphazard than his movie watching list.

He’s on chapter four when he hears the kitten purring and looks up from the page, wondering where Tiger is. He and Steve made fast friends, but he’s been a failure as a therapy animal.

Then he sees Tiger. He’s on Bucky’s knee, an orange puffball against the black of his jeans. Bucky’s still staring, but his fingers are moving over the kitten’s head, scratching behind his huge bat ears.

Something comes loose in Steve’s chest and he lets out a breath. He finds Bucky has shifted his gaze from looking at nothing to looking at him. He really seems to _see_ Steve for the first time in a long time.

“Hey, Bucky,” Steve says. He can’t keep the happiness out of his voice, he doesn’t even try.

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky says. “What’re you reading?”

“A very strange and disturbing book,” Steve says. He thinks that for more… modern… people the book probably isn’t that strange, but to him it’s a big shock. There’s always going to be a part of him that’s stuck in the 1940s.

“Careful, Rogers,” Bucky says. “You don’t want to give yourself nightmares.”

Steve laughs and Bucky’s lips quirk in an almost-smile. The silence draws out and when Steve really looks at him again, he’s gone, gaze directed back toward nowhere. Then he realizes Tiger is still purring, Bucky is still petting him.

Steve nods and goes back to his book with a little less weight bearing down on his chest.

**[4]**

It is sleeting outside, the walls are blue inside and Bucky is trying to get his head in order. He slides back and forth, here then gone again. The mentality is never the same as it used to be though, not even when he’s _almost_ all right for a minute.

He touched Steve’s face again the night before and Steve closed his eyes, lashes drooping like tired wings. His breath had been shaking when he let it out and reached up to touch Bucky’s wrist, fingertips resting on the pulse there. And Bucky felt it again, that pain as sharp as a cutting edge. It had ripped at him, torn something and he’d made a strange sound in the back of his throat as he’d taken his hand away.

“Don’t,” was all Steve had said.

Bucky had put his hand back and they had stood there for ten minutes; bizarre sculptures stuck between the motion and the act.

Now it’s dusk and supper was Chinese tonight. Steve’s reading his fortune, still chewing the last of the cookie it came in. Bucky has a metallic taste in his mouth that he recognizes as adrenaline.

Steve takes the food cartons and throws them away. Bucky is waiting for him on the other side of the kitchen threshold. He doesn’t touch Steve’s face this time, he kisses him; crushes his mouth to Steve’s and pushes close to his body. It hurts worse than anything has so far, but Bucky thinks this is a necessary kind of pain, the kind of pain that should be pursued. It might just be that the answer he’s been looking for is in it.

He manhandles Steve and he lets it happen, lets Bucky push him against the doorframe and lick inside his mouth. His hands on Bucky’s shoulders feel like hands from a dream. Bucky keeps his metal hand dangling at his side, only to jump when he feels Steve’s fingers close around it and squeeze.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve says. “It’s all right.”

He nuzzles Bucky’s cheek and shivers as he draws his metal hand up to rest on the nape of his neck; that vulnerable and easily damaged spot. Bucky makes a sound like a growl that rolls in the back of his throat and pushes against Steve harder. His fingers curl around his neck and squeeze.

Steve’s breath hitches as he pulls back.

“Slow down,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You won’t break,” Bucky says.

“No, I won’t,” Steve says. His smile is soft and a little sad; he remembers as well as Bucky does. “Not then and not now.”

He puts his hands on the sides of Bucky’s neck and oh, that’s dangerous, but he doesn’t pull away. He lets Steve stroke his thumbs along his pulse, lets him drag his fingers down to the hollow of his throat and play along his collarbone where it presses against the cloth of his shirt.

The pain swallows him and he kisses Steve again, letting it have its say, letting it consume him.

It is not magic, it is a fumble into the bedroom and spit and sweat and Steve’s fingers biting into his back as he whispers, “Just go slow,” in Bucky’s ear.

Steve’s voice cracks the way Bucky remembers it and he kisses him, urging more from him. Steve gives it, like he always has and Bucky gobbles it up, thinks _mine_ with a fierceness bordering on madness.

When Steve goes over the edge, he squeezes Bucky’s ribs with his strong legs so tightly he could swear he hears them creak even as he thinks again: _mine, yes_. His mind is static then for a little while, pleasure and motion and want culminating to their inevitable conclusion. He’s hardly out of breath, but he’s tired and sated all the same and Steve is watching him with eyes bluer than the walls.

When it’s over Steve stretches out next to him, rests his head on his shoulder and kisses the flesh where it joins with metal, his lips tracing the seam. Bucky stares at the ceiling, touches Steve’s soft hair and listens to the sleet grating against the windowpanes. When Steve falls asleep, he gets up and dresses again and goes to sit in the armchair because he’s not sure if he belongs in that bed, if he has the right.

**[5]**

Steve doesn’t know what to say after waking up to find himself alone, the side of the bed where Bucky had lain cold. The pain is jagged and cruel, it lives somewhere near the center of his belly with feeder roots stretching out in all directions, seeking out some new way to pump him full of disappointment. He feels _used_ , which is not as unheard of a feeling for him as some would think. And yet, he doesn’t think anything Bucky did was intentional, was meant to hurt him and leave him feeling this way.

Bucky sits in his chair, he pets Tiger, he watches Steve with a feverish light in his eyes; a light that never goes out.

For the first forty-eight hours after the fact, the silence is deep and thick. The sleet from that night has turned to snow that falls lightly. It looks orange, radioactive and untrustworthy, in the spillover glow of the streetlights. Bucky seems to like it though, now he doesn’t stare at _nothing_ , he stares at the falling snow. That is, when he’s not looking at Steve; questions and reflections making his eyes murky.

On the third night, it occurs to Steve that the silence isn’t strained for him alone. It dawns on him that maybe Bucky got up and left the bed because he didn’t know what else to do. Bucky doesn’t _fit_ anywhere anymore, at least that’s what Bucky _thinks_. Steve should have noticed it sooner and he feels like an idiot, like a _bad friend_ for not doing so.

“You’re wrong, you know.” 

The silence snaps like a rubber band, now the air is full of possibilities both good and bad.

“About what?” Bucky asks.

“You do belong,” Steve says. “Here. Now.”

“With you?”

Steve hears the question in it and he gawps at Bucky, more dumbstruck by that than anything else he’s heard in recent years. He wants to know how Bucky can dare ask him such a question. He should know Steve’s answer because it has never been different. He knows what happened to Bucky; knows he’s not the same and never will be. Steve’s answer still has not changed because there are bits and pieces of Bucky left, core personality traits that cannot be erased. They’re sleepy right now, still waking up, but Steve sees them and hears them; he _knows_ them.

Steve stands up and goes to Bucky, holds his hands out to him.

“With me,” he says. He waits for Bucky to either take his hands or slap them away; it’s a balance that is precarious at best.

When Bucky takes his hands and stands up to look right at him, he’s there again and he’s _seeing_ Steve. It’s easy for Steve to kiss him now (and once again), easy to feel Bucky’s lips under his and know that he is willing to do whatever it takes to keep it.

He takes Bucky to bed with him again, shivers and arches under the touch of his hands, his mouth, until he is wrung out and trembling. When the sweat is dry on their skin and the night’s minutes have crept closer toward midnight, Steve touches Bucky’s arm.

“Please stay,” he says.

Bucky touches Steve’s hand, fingers moving until he finds the scar on the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger. As he strokes Steve’s scar, Bucky doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t need to. In the weak light, Steve sees the corners of Bucky’s mouth curve upward into the slowest, smallest of smiles and that’s all the answer he needs.


End file.
